Indian version of Y Combinator...
iaccelerator.org
iaccelerator.org
Yeah Right!
From the FAQ
"When the company is formed we set up a bank account. When the bank account is set up we deposit a check for the full amount of our commitment ie. 5 Lakh directly into it. A company secretary is brought in to distribute funds from the company checking account as per the budget instructions. Adjustments to the budget can be made at board meetings. Founders do not have direct check writing control of the bank account."
You need to buy an extra laptop, wait for the next board meeting and/or get approval from the "Company Secretary".
"Founders do not have direct check writing control of the bank account!"
Sounds like a great way to run a startup!
And they have the audacity to call it "The Indian version of YC".
I doubt PG and co sit around approving line items and writing checks every other day! AFAIK they hand over the money at the beginning and that's that.
Freeman, you should reconsider stuff like this. People you have met and qualified as able entrepreneurs, who, in a risk averse society like India are taking the risk to start a startup - do you think they are out to steal 5 lakh Rs? If these are people who couldn't make 5 lakh Rs a year at a job or people you don't trust, you shouldn't be funding them at all.
This is a shame.
(If you were being sarcastic, I couldn't detect it in your sentence, so I will respond to it as written. Apologies if I didn't catch the tone right.)
yeah sure. When a seed funder decides to spend 10,000 $ on a company after extensive interactions with the team, his first concern is to avoid "collusion corruption and casteism" and so he has to have line item veto ;-)
I wonder if PG and co lose their 17,000 $ occasionally to people who just take the money and blow it gambling in Las Vegas? After all they just hand over the money, with no "guarantee" that the team will actually start coding/running a company.
No doubt, they are top brains of India. PERIOD
Focussing on IITians at any age is like leaving stale comments scattered in a codebase and being misled by them.
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The less obvious rebuttal: Getting into the IITs marks one as smart, but not making it doesn't necessarily mark one as inferior.
In my experience those who rank 1-50 are in a stratospheric league of their own. But choosing between ranks 1500+ and the best of other indian colleges (who often didn't pass the IIT tests) is a crap shoot. There's just too many deserving students for the IITs to accomodate.
(Full disclosure: I prepared for the IITs for two years, didn't make it. It was a long time ago, but perhaps I still bear the scars.)
Man, I seriously recommend you to come out of this grudge and look at this recent report: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3752658,...
I am utterly sorry for you my friend. After witnessing your witty and intelligent remarks, I feel you must have been admitted to IIT. You are amazing.
All in good faith :)
PS: I din't say students from other universities are all fools. But sad, your comment has made me to feel so.
Hmmm, I guess they dont teach English at the IITs ??
And akkartik is right, if the IITian's rank wasnt 800 or higher then they really arent much different from students from other good engineering schools.
And to my knowledge this is how most Indians rate guys from IITs.
Your statement shows your ignorance about IITs and students. Please note, I din't say all IITians are "GOD", and can do any damn thing. Still, most(yeah even with rank > 4000) are better than top students from rest engineering colleges.
PS: I satisfy your rank < 800 requirement, and I am not bragging about that :P
As an aside, I know of no other school(s) in the world, a majority of whose students choose to append their school names with their email addresses and nicknames on websites. NickIIT* or NickIIM* is legion. One of the reasons people describe it with phrases like "circle jerk".
marks != merit
That kind of dogged persistence helps when doing a startup.
The IIT-ian you need to watch out for is the one that keeps reminding you that he's from IIT. This kind of guy has usually not done anything else with his life.
Sridhar Vembu of Zoho went to IIT-Madras. He aint doing too bad!
So IIT helps but you certainly dont have to be an IIT-ian to succeed. Some day I hope to prove that :P ...
The only negative "opinion" that I have about IIT-ians (from the ones that I have met) is that they are very good at solving clearly defined problems but they have a hard time defining the problem itself. Ie they have a hard time figuring what the problem is in the first place. If you can give them the problem, clearly defined, they will solve it for you.
(Again this could just be my prejudice :) ...
I love the IITs. Of the 5 enlightened professors I met in India, 3 were at an IIT. I had some of my best times at events at IITs. But using those as a filter is stupid and as you point out, in the case of those who brag about having gone to an IIT, its invariably counterproductive in my experience.
Seriously if theres one credential which you ever do respect its IIT (pre-2000) graduated. At one point of time they were either very very bright or very very hardworking. Of course this might have changed in the years after graduating from IIT.
(Note: After 2000, they rebranded a lot of the state level colleges to "IIT" status.)
Discloser: I have been to Gatech.
http://blogs.adventnet.com/svembu/2005/11/03/college-educati...
Approx burn per person in Bangalore: Initial: Relocating+ house deposit+ registration+ CA + desktop + table + chair + net connection setup + office stationary: About 1L. Monthly: Rent + utilities + food + net + cheap vps: 12-15k, Phone + travel: 5k. Extra: 15k.
So, we are looking at about 60k monthly and 1.5-2L initial burn for 2 non-Bangaloreans to go and do a start up there.
Disclaimer: I live in Mumbai.
Edit: I stand corrected, this round seems to be happening in Bangalore where 500K is closer to 1.5 times than 2 times the starting salary of a new CS grad.
Comparisons to YCombinator is highly unfair to YC.
Having said that, I think the initiative is good, though its not mature yet. They are evolving over time, they have come from saying something like "we will put in a big place and give you a bed, table, pc and Internet connection so that you can work whenever you wake up" [treating as kids or just coders, 2008] to saying something like "we will give 5L and open an account for the company" [treated as entrepreneurs, 2009]. Still, a long way to go.
The 2008 archives with some photos http://www.ciieindia.org/blog/category/iaccelerator/ . I do agree that they have a bad choice of photos on the blog, it does effect PR.
Moreover they will need someone like PG to make it like YC, that ain't happenin' that easy. :-)
Still, I wish them luck! We do need "worthy" YC clones in many countries.
In any event, the world needs more of these.
In that case, this one: http://iaccelerator.org/wp-content/themes/primepress/headers...
Presumably, business models that require labour more or less linear to scale would be the right kind to base in India. That is the opposite of what startup generally gets thought of as otherwise. I see no reason why a services 'startup' is a bad idea. There is plenty of improvement to be made there.